1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to printing a locked print job. The present invention is more particularly related to distributing the locked print job to one or more users.
2. Description of the Related Art
In environments such as an office or computer lab, computers may be connected to one or more printers shared over a network. To print a document, a computer user typically transmits a request to print the document to one of the shared printers. The shared printer prints the document, in response to the print request, and the computer user retrieves the printed document from the shared printer.
However, in such environments, it is difficult to maintain confidentiality of the printed document. For example, it is difficult to prevent other users from viewing the printed document between the time the document is printed by the printer and when the printed document is retrieved by the computer user.
Accordingly, a printing device may be configured to require that a password be entered, before the printing device permits the document to be printed. FIG. 1 illustrates an approach for implementing locked printing on a printing device, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,249,900, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety. As illustrated in FIG. 1, locked printing is initiated by a user at a client device in step S2. The user specifies a user ID and password data corresponding to the locked printing. Next, print data is generated and transmitted to the printing device in steps S4 and S6, respectively. In the printing device, the print data is processed by a locked print process in step S8, and stored on the printing device if locked printing is specified in step S10. Then, the user accesses the printing device and selects the locked printing option in step S12. The user selects the user ID and enters the corresponding password data in step S14. When the password data is authenticated in step S16, a list of print data associated with the authenticated user ID/password pair is presented in step S18. The user may select one of or more of the listed print data and perform an action (e.g., print or delete) in step S20.
However, since the user ID and corresponding password data are required to act on the print data, only the user who specifies the user ID and password data can unlock the print request and retrieve the printed document from the printing device. Further, it is difficult for a user to distribute a printing job to his/her team members without the user sharing his/her password and user ID. Thus, the user cannot conveniently distribute the locked printing to one or more users.